Tag: Sitecore

Hope you’re playing around with Sitecore 9 and with the newly introduced cool features in it. Recently, I’ve been exploring Sitecore Forms and implemented the Google Re-captcha form element within the Sitecore forms. Re-captcha is the basic requirement for the form submission process and in order to implement this, we’ve to write some code to it.

Before you go through with this post in detail, you must know the basics of Sitecore Forms.

We will go through step by step process to implement the Google Recaptcha with Sitecore Forms using the custom form element. And will create a generic component which you can use for any other form as well.

Do you need to remove the Personalization Rules for many items in bulk or you would like to learn about that on how to do that quickly? If yes then you are at right place. 🙂

Recently there was a requirement to add personalization throughout the site. So the team did that at the template level for the required pages. But they didn’t want that for the specific node and all it’s child items and wanted to keep that away from all personalization and also it will never be applied to that items. There were approx. 1000+ items, so if they remove it manually for each item — it will take ample amount of time. In order to save the time we created a utility that will do the job in few minutes.

Many a time we need an option to have some utility that will do the job easily and save the time for the content team to get things done faster and take the bunch out of the plate. One such requirement was for adding the sub-layout/rendering in bulk. I quickly built a utility that will do the job easier for the content team.

A simple utility that will do the following:

Add Rendering

Assign placeholder key to a newly added rendering

Add appropriate data-source value

The utility will ask for the following:

Parent-item ID

Template ID – Which items, defined from the given template need to have the rendering.

The only reason people visit your website is for content. You have it; they want it.

Content plays a vital role on the website. Thus, when designing a website, we have to ensure that every silver of content – from microscopic blocks of text to enormous banner images and everything in between – is included.

Every website will try to have a rich content, which engages user to read. It will be packed with thousands of words, images, and interactions. How do we ensure that when a new website launch, it’s filled with right content in the right places?

Sitecore SXA (Sitecore Experience Accelerator) is the buzzword nowadays in the Sitecore World. The Sitecore Experience Accelerator provides reusable, templated UX layouts and components to help you get up and running quickly. One of the important features of Sitecore SXA is Creative Exchange, which is helpful for executing the development and designing process to be done in parallel. The Creative Exchange process is designed to facilitate several different teams working on a website. For example, the team that is working on the theme of the site can work in parallel with other teams.

In this post, I will go through the step by step process to show you how to export, change the color of the text and then import back in Sitecore with the Creative Exchange.

You can now easily configure Sitecore Items for Scheduled Publishing using Sitecore PowerShell Extensions. PowerShell has a great Power. It saves developer life a lot by providing the way of Integrated Scripting Environment and without Web Deployment, you can execute the script on the different environments easily.

You can create any number of configured items for publishing at – /sitecore/system/Modules/Schedule Publishing Items/

Schedule Items_DD-MM-YYYY — This is just a sample item without properly selected values. You just need to add the values properly and Enable the checkbox for publishing at Scheduled Time.

There is an option to disable an item or delete an item once publishing is done so that it should never process next time when the scheduler looks for the scheduled publishing task. If you do not select to disable an item after publishing is done and do not select to delete an item then it will execute every time the scheduler check for schedule items to publish as the time is passed away.

Note: The script will execute, once the scheduler starts scheduling jobs. The default time is 10 minutes, so every 10 minutes system will check for scheduled publishing. Therefore, while setting the time you need to be aware of the scheduled task execution time. Refer below in your config. If you have changed the value then it will work accordingly.

This might be the case for your requirement, first Export Sitecore Items, then it could be Update Sitecore Items in bulk and then I’m sure there would be the third one to Publish Sitecore Items in Bulk.

I’ve written Sitecore Powershell script which would do the job easier. In Update Sitecore Items — I provided the sample file, the same file you can use for Bulk Publish.

Sample CSV File: pt_Publish_Sitecore_Items (I generally prefix the file with language so that we know which language version items are getting published)

Below script will first ask the user for the CSV File. Then it will ask for Target Database to publish Sitecore Items — The reason for providing this option is because every Sitecore site have the staging environment and it’s always better to verify the changes. So you can accordingly select the target database and after verifying you can push it Live. Once processing is done file will be deleted. Publish Mode is set to Smart.

Note, Sample CSV File has two important columns which are required by this script, ItemPath and Language — Items will be published in the provided language.

In Multilingual Site, Content Authors many times create duplicate items or copy items and in that case, all the versions of the items are getting copied. And they want to remove the language versions in bulk so that no wrong language version with wrong data gets published live.

If you are implementing and looking for the quick solution, see below code:

If content authors are working on many items and if they remove language versions manually then for each it will take hours of them to get it done. This tool will help content authors to remove the unnecessary language versions from the Sitecore Items in few seconds/minutes.

Are you looking for quick and easy way to update Sitecore Items — Sitecore PowerShell does that job very easily.

In my previous blog — I provided the PowerShell script/module by which you can export data using Sitecore PowerShell Extensions. If you see that script/file properly – First two header rows are “ItemPath” and “Language“. These columns are required for the below script to update the data. I’ve kept the language column as required for this because I work on Sitecore Site having more than 10 languages and in that case, we need language option so that correct language version gets updated. And other header rows in the file are the field names. Once I have exported the data in CSV – do the required updates in Excel and import the same file using below script. It will import updated data back to Sitecore Items.

I referred a couple of blogs for importing CSV File and in all, we have to provide the Path for the file but for providing the path, that file should reside on the server. So I looked for some other way around and found an easy way to upload the file, process it and then delete it. Let me know if you have any other ideas/suggestions for it.

I heard a lot about Sitecore PowerShell – it’s the great tool and one of the best module on Sitecore Marketplace. Also the most downloaded module crossing SIM. One fine day I was installing SXA, that also said — Before you install the SXA package, please make sure that you have installed: Sitecore PowerShell extensions (full 4.5 for Sitecore 8) from https://marketplace.sitecore.net/Modules/S/Sitecore_PowerShell_console.aspx. Then I started exploring PowerShell from the Video Series by Michael West on YouTube. These are awesome videos to learn and understand Sitecore PowerShell. And once you have viewed the videos, after that when you look at the script, you will easily understand it. For every Sitecore Developer, it’s worth exploring Sitecore PowerShell. You’ll really like and enjoy with it. You won’t open Visual Studio to code, you will only open Sitecore for scripting – as it says – Sitecore PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment).

Export Sitecore Items Data — We are using this tool a lot to give the reports or data to the client, created in a .aspx file – It was written by my friend. And then I modified it based on requirements. After exploring PowerShell. I thought to implement it in PowerShell. And it got ready in couple of hours as I knew how to work with Sitecore PowerShell 😉